Tools for Accounting Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Tools for Accounting - Research Paper Example Like all professionals, accountants rely on various tools to help them perform various accounting tasks. Looking back at the history of the accounting profession, it can be said that the types of tools used for accounting have increased in number as well as they have become sophisticated with developing business markets and their implementation is becoming complicated. This brief paper will highlight and discuss the use of a current technology XBRL for accounting purposes. Individuals and business organizations may use tags to design business and financial software. The use of XBRL is highly recommended to accountants and organizations as the software makes its easier to handle different items of financial information, just like a barcode make its easier for the supply management to handle assets. XBRL software increases accessibility and reliability of the financial data. It also reduces the costs ad efforts of the organization to gather data for analysis. There are different accoun ting communities encourage the adaptation of XBRL, including major accounting companies that are members of XBRL Consortium. The use of XBRL in the business and accounting field is wide, it is recommended that use of XBRL can enhance the efficiency and reliability of the financial data. The use of XBRL in the accounting field is listed below: Unique tags can be designed to identify ratios and basic information for the auditors It provides a range of information related to accounting items, identifies either the item shall be credit or debit, currency or period It further provides a range of formula and calculation related to one another (that is, ratios or indicators) to determine the categories or its presentational purposes. Historical use Business entities are highly influenced with the development of technology. The history of XBRL begins with the efforts of an American person named Charles Hoffman. He was a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) from Tacoma, Washington. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) also played a vital role in making XBRL, what it is today. In 1998 Charles enlisted the support of AICPA to lead the development of XBRL with the goal of providing a standard, XML-based language for digitalizing business reports in accordance with the rules of accounting in every country around the globe. XBRL International is a global consortium with over 250 leading organizations concerned with the exchange and timeliness of financial and business reporting data. With the efforts of the institute and its members a framework of specifications and taxonomies was introduced providing a standard XML-based language for digitalizing business reports. XBRL operates under the United States jurisdiction globally and in the supervision of a committee of AICPA structured from 1999-2006, until it became a separate non-profit organization in 2006 (Debreceny, Felden and Piechocki). In the recent years, XBRL has become one of the most common and advanced technologies that is being used at major corporations and professional accountants worldwide. Its use is likely to continue to grow over the next years. XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a standard form of electronic medium to change and share business and financial information. XBRL use ‘tags’ to describe the work like a bar code and defines each of these tags by using a number of dictionaries called ‘taxonomies’. XBRL taxonomies are collections of taxonomy schemas and linkbases. Taxonomy schema is an XML schema document file. Linkbases are XML document file. Theses follow the Xlink specifications. XBRL Instance XBRL Instance is extensively used in the business organization, it allows the organization